De­tails of WW1 nurses un­cov­ered

Records of more than 5,000 First World War nurses have been pub­lished on­line.

Avail­able at Forces War Records ( forces-war- records.co.uk), the lat­est record set to join the site lists mem­bers of the Ter­ri­to­rial Force Nurs­ing Ser­vice (TFNS) who were awarded medals for their ef­forts dur­ing the con­flict.

This not only in­cludes women who re­ceived hon­ours such as the 1914-15 Star, Bri­tish War Medal and Vic­tory Medal, but also the Ter­ri­to­rial War Medal – one of the rarest cam­paign medals of the con­flict.

The doc­u­ments, thought to have been lost, were dis­cov­ered by Forces War Records Di­rec­tor Phil Cooper while look­ing through a box of newly ac­quired items at the Army Med­i­cal Ser­vices Mu­seum in Alder­shot.

Col­lec­tions cu­ra­tor Ceri Gage said she “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” when she re­alised what they were.

“Find­ing the medal rolls was a pleas­ant sur­prise for us,” she told Who Do You Think You Are? Mag­a­zine. “To have them in the pub­lic do­main is fan­tas­tic for re­search within the mu­seum and fur­ther afield. It pub­licly demon­strates the con­tri­bu­tions of the ladies of the TFNS.”